Following the latest information that the Government has issued on Corona Virus. City Councillors in Wednesfield North, received concerns from bus users on the 59 Bus, relating to other bus users,not socially distancing, and also not wearing face guards/masks. Which is contrary to the law relating to Public Transport.
Your City Councillors immediatley wrote to the NXWM Management team, explaining your concerns.
Here is the NXWM response to those concerns.
NXWM Management stated – “We do understand that other people’s behaviour does make many of our customers angry and upset.
The government has advised of a number of exemptions to the ruling on face coverings on public transport, which means that some of our customers do have justifiable grounds for not wearing a face covering when using our services. Not all of these exemptions are obvious. There’s more information regarding this here:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-safer-travel-guidance-for-passengers#face-coverings
Compliance with wearing face coverings on the bus is consistently at over 90% across our services. Considering the very non-specific list of what makes somebody exempt from wearing one (for example, one in ten people have asthma), we think this is probably about right.
Drivers have been trained to remind customers that it’s the law that they must wear face coverings on public transport.
We are also recording and reporting all our data to Safer Travel Police. In total, Safer Travel Police have thrown 600 people off our buses for not wearing face coverings when they should have been.
On social distancing, we are advising our customers:
Please sit in the window seat. If you are travelling as a household or other bubble please sit together. If you can, please sit so that the seats in front of and behind you are empty. Some seats will be labelled out of use and please don’t sit directly behind the driver.
To enable safe social distancing, please do not stand on the bus. Check to see if there is a suitable seat upstairs on double deck buses.
In addition, if a driver feels a bus is getting busy, they can display a “Bus full” sign, only drop customers off at the next stop(s) and radio back to Control who will either let them know another bus is close behind them or send a spare to follow on behind.
We are also advising our customers to leave plenty of time for their journeys, so that if the bus they were planning to get is busier than they expected, they can wait for the next one. ”
Councillor Phil Bateman said ” Rita Potter Mary and I are, very thankful for the response. We will be asking NXWM, to purposely ask their Safer Travel Police team to check the 59 bus service in the Peak periods. We are also appealing directly to our constituents who use the service. Please use a face mask, its against the law not too. Also you are freaking out others in your own community when you do not!”
